The canonical decomposition of once-punctured torus bundles

Abstract

We determine the canonical polyhedral decomposition of every hyperbolic once-punctured torus bundle over the circle. In fact, we show that the only ideal polyhedral decomposition that is straight in the hyperbolic structure and that is invariant under a certain involution is the ideal triangulation defined by Floyd and Hatcher. Unlike previous work on this problem, the techniques we use are not geometric. Instead, they involve angled polyhedral decompositions, thin position and a version of almost normal surface theory.